


Spider Bite

by creatoriginsane



Category: The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: Female Bros, Friendship, Gen, Peter Parker Needs a Friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 14:06:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6757183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatoriginsane/pseuds/creatoriginsane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Parker is self-destructive, self-denied, and self-sustained.</p><p>( AU where Peter Parker has a best friend )</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spider Bite

**Author's Note:**

> Written back in 2012. May or may not have a sequel depending on how I feel like it.

"Parker, right?" An unfamiliar voice reaches his ears, but he doesn't look up from his camera.

"Peter Parker?" The voice is nearing from behind him, a low-pitched feminine voice.

A figure stops before and below him with dark hair and even darker eyes, "Mac Jones." Short for Caroline Macmillan Jones—she smiles.

He knows her. They have some classes together. She's part of the theatre club, as far as he knows.

"Nice to meet you." She raises a hand towards him.

"It's, uh, nice to meet you too." He says sheepishly with a nervous smile, doesn't she know that they have classes together? He considers shaking her hand, but she lowers it down before he is able to.

His mind goes on defense mode, "I'm not free this Friday, nor am I on Saturday or Sunday. Sorry." He says quickly before looking down on his camera.

"I'm not asking you out, Parker." She says calmly as he prepares for an insult, he never was smooth with girls. She takes a deep breath, "I want to talk to you."

Talk to him? This must be some joke. Well, duh, there isn't anyone here so it must be him—

"I'm sorry if you were put up to this, or if you were dared to." He replies quietly, with his head down.

"I'm not stupid enough to do this if I was; and most people are out in the mall by this time." She sits beside him with her tumbler held between her hands.

"So, why are you here? You want me to take a picture of your boyfriend's future car with you wearing a bikini?" The question was funny, but his tone wasn't—it was distressful actually.

"Funny Parker," She chuckles a little bit, "Three things; one, I don't have either—bikini or boyfriend—two, I have a car and it's secondhand, and three—" She pauses, patting a hand on his back, "I want you to be the subject of my thesis for sociology."

His breath hitched, as if this wasn't a joke enough.

"What, why?" He turns to look at her, her face smug.

"Just imagine," She slings an arm over his shoulders and pulls him brotherly close. She looks wickedly into the sky, "Peter Parker is just a boy; a mathematical genius, skateboard enthusiast, and semi-pro photographer molded into one wimpy body of a boy." She snaps her fingers and nods contentedly to herself, "That's the opening line."

He's still at loss for words, "Doesn't that sound, uhm, awkward? And why me?" He slumps forward.

"It's like everyone wants to be friends with you just because you have a camera." She removes her arm from his shoulders and he is thankful for that, "People are materialistic. People are selfish. People look for people who can make them look and feel good. People constantly use those who are lower than them." She pats the same hand on his back and he stares at her, "People; sociology. Sociology is a part of psychology. I want to be psychologist. My parents don't. They call me a rebel. Rebellious, a trait most teenagers share. Teenagers are people. Sociology is people. Simple."

It sounds like she wants to use him like all the others, but anyway—

"You could say no, Parker, it's fine." She smiles reassuringly, "This country needs some freedom, anyway."

Her way of thinking isn't logical, but—

"Aunt May says that I should socialize more, so yeah." He sounds like a child. "But don't you have friends who are more than willing to help you with your, uhm, thesis?"

She bites her lips, "Do you have friends, Parker?"

He doesn't lose her questioning eyes, "Do you?"

"I don't know." She sighs.

"Then I guess we're in the same boat."

She chuckles a bit at his words, "We're sailing to some unknown island, Parker." She nods, "It's nice to finally get to talk with you." She sounds as if she's been meaning to talk to him for a very, very long time.

"Yeah, you too."

She stands to leave and walks off, but spins to him when she's five steps down, "Gwen Stacy's pretty, isn't she?"

She smirks knowingly when he just stares wide-eyed at her.

* * *

"I never knew you were into deadly stunts, Parker." She's sitting on makeshift bench beside tubs of paint and dry paintbrushes, swinging her legs from back to front.

"I guess this could go into your thesis then." He smirks while preparing for another jump from high scaffolding to hard concrete with his skateboard.

"Peter Parker is self-destructive," She types down on her laptop, smiling to herself, "ecstatic about turning a friendly hobby into a deadly stunt."

"You make me sound like some wackjob."

"Maybe you are, Parker." She stares up at him, who's standing atop the scaffolding and she couldn't imagine his wimpy body to be able to climb it. "But aren't we all?"

"Touché." He sets his board on the edge, before hopping onto it, sliding backward then forward in a blink of an eye. He's spiraling downward before balancing a tip of his board on the edge of a platform. He spins a full circle with his board tilted, and lands with half of his left foot on the ground and half of it tilting the board upwards.

The way he screams with a smile almost indicates his need to feel something.

"How does it feel like?" She asks cautiously, even workshops wouldn't have her screaming madly with a smile breaking her face.

The sound of the keys under her fingers is muted by his laugh.

"Alive."

* * *

When she drives by his uncle and aunt's house one night, he's not there. She decides to stay, they're more than accommodating and she's almost sure that she's the first to come over, invited or not, friend or enemy.

"Peter's a nice boy." His aunt May offers her a warm mug of a mix of coffee and chocolate and she's too shy to not accept it with both hands.

"Nice, meaning he's out every night. We don't even know where he goes to, May!" Uncle Ben, as he always calls him, shouts in worry and in anger.

"You mean; he's done this since—ever?" She glances at the clock, "It's past nine o'clock, maybe he's out studying?" No, stupid question. "Or he's got a self-created photography project?"

"I need some air, I'll be outside." Ben huffs in frustration, before getting up to leave. "Nice to, uh, meet you."

"Mac Jones, sir." She smiles after him.

"He's never told us anything." May says quietly. "He hasn't even told us about you, dear."

"Teenagers." She nods to the calmly woman, "We keep to ourselves if we want to, but say them when it's not the time to say them."

May tilts her head and looks at her curiously, "You're Peter's friend,"

"Yes, I am, ma'm." She thinks this situation could become awkward.

"He's a nice boy." She repeated.

"Yes he is, ma'm."

"Are you two—" May almost finishes her question, but gets cut off by a loud, obnoxious cough. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, thank you." Jones says after downing warm liquid down her throat. "Peter and I, we're just friends, I mean, he likes someone else."

"Oh, I understand, when I was your age, I—"

There was a furious shout from the porch.

"Uhm, I think I should," Jones whispered and May nodded, understanding the situation.

"It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Parker."

"You too, dear."

She left through the back door, hoping he hadn't noticed her car parked a few houses down.

* * *

She finished only a fraction of her thesis when she gives it to him. There's only an introduction, a list of possible topics to be discussed, a list of references, and a list of unfamiliar words she wants to include.

_Peter Parker is a boy; a naïve boy who's lost everything in the world from my point of view. Parents gone out on a search for something unknown. Uncle died from a call of justice, shot in the stomach by a man with a star-shaped tattoo on his left wrist. Peter Parker is self-destructive, showing the world just how tough he is, but not concerned about the consequences. Peter Parker is a mathematical genius who goes home alone, walking in the cold darkness. Peter Benjamin Parker is a boy, a boy who just wants to become a man._

"I'm sorry Parker." She knows that he knows that it isn't just because of slow writing progression.

"This isn't half-bad." He says contentedly, eyeing the paper with interest, his contacts replaced by vintage-era glasses.

She stops.

"Does it feel empty?" She asks him cautiously.

"It feels like falling from the edge of the world, but not lonely, not at all." He runs off without a goodbye and she hears his angered scream through the docks.

Peter Parker is self-destructive, self-denied, and self-sustained.

She scraps the draft she's shown him and works on another, heading home in her car. She's sure enough that he can handle himself.

* * *

"Masked vigilante out to kill, highly dangerous, police on the lookout for possible suspects, be cautious of the colors red and black." She scours over the newspaper as she's studying with him one afternoon in his room. "Who do you think it is, Parker? Some justice-seeking individual? Some criminal turned good? A civilian gone bad?"

"I dunno.." He drawls out while scanning his eyes over his notes for the exam tomorrow.

"I see you've got Pretty Stacy on your desktop." She notes smugly.

"I—uh,"

"Nah, it's okay, she's got that killer smile though." She looks at it for some time. "Big and bright, and even brighter eyes. She's perfect, don't you think?"

He thinks she's a closeted lesbian.

"Do you, uh, do you like her?" He's as shocked as her when this question comes out of his mouth.

"Parker, I am not a lesbian." She says quickly, clearly, and smoothly, "To be honest, I hated her." Her tone seemed off, quiet and depressed.

"Why, I mean, did anything happen—"

"I'll repeat, once, I am not a lesbian." She stands up and plops beside him on the bed with a long-held huff, "I hated her because, you know."

He doesn't, and he's silent.

"She's part of the debate team, she's got A's on her card since ever, she's been recommended by the school to the best colleges in New York, she's got a high-level internship at Oscorp, she's perfect and her family's perfect as her for crying out loud!"

It takes time for his hovering hand to clamp down one of her shoulders in comfort, "People like her give us hope that we can be something good."

His words were incomparable to her latest monologue. There are tears streaming down her cheeks before she wills herself not to cry, in front of a boy even.

She blinks the tears away, thanking her self-control, and looks at him, his consoling face, "But what if we can't? What if we can't be something good?"

"We can, everyone can, all we have to do is prove the world wrong."

"You speak smart for a boy, Parker. I hope you get under Gwen's tough-and-hardy skin." With ruddy cheeks, she smiles to him.

"Thank you." He grips her shoulder, but doesn't hug her—nor does she move to hug him.

* * *

He's sitting on the roof the next time she visits.

"So I heard a little birdy say to me that you've finally been kissed." Half of her body appears outside the window, while the rest was inside his bedroom.

"Gwen Stacy, huh?" She smirks as she notices the flush in his cheeks. She gets out and sits with him, her legs swinging from the edge.

"How did you—"

"An actor's got to have a keen eye on his surroundings, I just noticed that you and her were smiling at each other earlier today." She shakes her head and laughs a little, "There's something you haven't told me, Parker."

"You're a good friend, I could even call you my best friend." He finally says after a bout of silence, for suspense.

"Aren't I, Parker?" She appears smug, "Just kidding," She assures him, "So what happened between you and Gwen? Do you do the thing I told you not to do yet? Too excited for her?" She snickers softly.

"What—No!" He exclaims and sits upright now, "It was just a pretty awkward dinner and she wanted to talk to me and—" He pauses, thinking about telling her who he really is. She is after all, his technical first friend, current best friend, and a girl who wants him to pursue Gwen Stacy—oh, and she's writing her thesis about him, and he's yet to see a longer version of what she's given to him before but she hasn't. She tells him that the next time he's going to see it is the night before she submits the paper. He's scared for her and for himself, but mostly for her. He gets a glimpse of her writing every once and a while, she gives him copies of scripts and texts even if he isn't part of the theatre club.

"What next, Parker? The suspense is killing me!"

"I kissed her."

She blinks and leans back a bit, "Wow, Parker. I never knew you had the guts to." She shrugs and smiles for him, patting his shoulder, "I mean, I know that you've always wanted to, but man, you actually did it!" She raises her other hand in a fist, bro-fist.

He obliges with a shy smile before scratching the back of his head sheepishly.

"So, how did it feel like? Were there the usual, over-used sparks? Some dark, hidden desire burning up inside? What?" She sounded too eager.

"I've got something to tell you," He whispered, forcing her to lean close.

"What, c'mon Parker, enough of this suspense, you know how suspense makes me kick and scream with rage."

"You wouldn't tell anyone, would you?"

"You've told me enough to last through two more years, Parker. What's with? Is she dating someone else?"

"No, it's just—"

"You like her so much that you want to marry her after graduation?"

"No, not like that!"

"You almost did it, but controlled yourself." She sounds so sure.

"No, Mac!" He whispers loudly and grabs both of her hands with his, clasping them together. "Mac, Mac, Mac.. Tell me that you aren't going to tell this to anyone."

She almost gasps and turns her face into a disturbed scowl, but her self-control is more powerful than a girlish hope—which is still disgusting for her.

"I—" He pauses for a bit and thinks through his words.

Her critical mind is too quick for her, "You like me, don't you?" The last two words weren't from her rational mind.

He stops, and she is almost sure so she lets her training do it for her.

"What the heck Parker?" She has never been good at acting out an angry girl, "You just have to go and keep it to yourself? It's not that don't like you, I like you, but I don't—" She's been used to aged roles, or young male ones.

"I'm Spiderman." There's supposed to be a smile on his face, but she doesn't see it. She's in shock, but she wants to laugh it off. She does.

"Parker, you're a smart boy, a nice boy, but don't start saying stupid things. You couldn't be." She shakes her head and looks down. He doesn't let go of her hands.

"Macmillan Jones," He hushes, "I am Spiderman."

She couldn't imagine him jumping and running from rooftops and sides of buildings. She couldn't even imagine him wearing a form-fitting latex suit. Nor can she imagine him shooting spider web-like projectiles from his wrists.

"You're not." She starts to believe him.

"I've been for a while now." The way his eyes are glued to hers makes her want to vomit all over the place. It couldn't be his wimpy body in that vigilante's suit, could it?

She decides that the greatest actors are those whom you'd least expect to be.


End file.
